How ArtistAssistApp accurately simulates color mixing and matching

ArtistAssistApp uses a scientifically proven model to simulate real color mixing and an advanced color similarity formula focusing on the color's spectral reflectance. For mediums that support physical mixing like watercolor, oil paint, acrylics, or gouache, ArtistAssistApp easily finds a matching color mixture for any target color. For mediums that don't support physical mixing, like pastels, the app selects the color that is most similar to the target color.

How does ArtistAssistApp work?

ArtistAssistApp uses a scientifically proven Kubelka-Munk model to simulate real color mixing. It requires working with colors' spectral reflectances (functions of wavelength) instead of RGB or other color models. It also enables the precise determination of the similarity between two colors, a process known as color matching. The app calculates the similarity of two colors using the geometric mean of Eucledean distance and the cosine similarity of their spectral reflectances.

Color similarity

The app presents the color similarity as a percentage. 100% means a perfect match. 0% means completely different colors, like black and white.

You can visually check how similar the spectral reflectance curves of the target color and the suggested color mixture are by pressing the "⋮" button and the "Reflectance chart" button.

Accurate color matching

For mediums that support physical mixing like watercolor, oil paint, acrylics, or gouache, ArtistAssistApp easily finds a matching color mixture for any target color. The app examines an enormous number of combinations of colors from your set and tries to dilute it or tint it until it finds the most similar color mixture. The app finds matching color mixtures even for very dark target colors with outstanding accuracy.

Accurate color matching is possible even for pastels, a medium that doesn't support physical mixing. Pastel sets often include hundreds of colors. Therefore, the app selects the color that is most similar to the target color.

Colored pencils and watercolor pencils support optical mixing just like watercolor, oil paint, and acrylics. By using the "Set as background" button, you can instruct the app to use optical mixing and get a huge number of colors even with a relatively small number of pencils.

Limited palettes

The "Limited palette" tab also demonstrates the ArtistAssistApp's high precision in color matching. The app matches even the darkest parts of the image with outstanding accuracy. Images created by the app using only three primary colors and black are almost identical to the reference photo.

Real color mixing simulation

Thanks to the highly accurate color mixing based on Kubelka-Munk theory, you can experiment with color mixing directly in ArtistAssistApp, eliminating the need for wasting real paints that can be expensive.

Trying to mix colors on paper

Let's try mixing these colors on paper and compare them to the simulation made by ArtistAssistApp.

About ArtistAssistApp

ArtistAssistApp, also known as Artist Assist App, is a web app for artists to accurately mix any color from a photo, analyze tonal values, turn a photo into an outline, draw with the grid method, paint with a limited palette, simplify a photo, remove the background from an image, compare photos pairwise, and more.

Try it now for free at https://app.artistassistapp.com to improve your painting and drawing skills and create stunning artworks.